The good Sun

One of the keys to making plants happy is to put them in a place that has plenty of sunshine.  As the planting continues, good sunny spots at the Florida Bee Farm are becoming scarce.   While thinking about this and a few other upcoming projects I decided to remove all the plants in front of the rain barrels and turn that into a growing area.  It's probably one of the most consistent sun spots at the Florida Bee Farm.

The papaya trees and corn plants were moved to add to the green fence around the apiary which has been a recent project.  Several flowering bushes and plumaria flowers were then relocated to the Bee Garden which is another ongoing project.  And after moving all the plants, I was able to start modifying the rain barrel irrigation plumbing which will undergo some major upgrades very soon.   The irrigation system will be beyond amazing. 

New growing table

After clearing the area a good size growing table was built and the top was painted.  It's a nice solid table which will have a hardware cloth surface for drainage.  Mulch and weed cloth was added under the table to keep the weeds at bay.  This table will have it's own irrigation zone and should be prime real estate for growing stuff.

The Honeybee Garden

For the last couple weeks work has been progressing on the honeybee garden which sits approximately 30 feet behind the hives.   Last weekend we planted the milkweed flowers and various other plants we had been accumulating.   Also there were many seedlings that were ready to plant so those were added to the garden.  Most of the seedlings were various varieties of sunflower but there were also Moringa (edible) and papaya seedlings.  I'm finally getting the hang of starting plants from seeds which is much more gratifying than store bought plants.

A couple hundred bulbs were also planted in the garden including many varieties and colors of iris, gladiolas and a bunch whose names evade me now.  A bag of mixed flower seeds (honeybee mix) was also sprinkled over the entire area.   If everything grows as planned it should be very beautiful.

A couple of days after mowing the lawn with that riding lawnmower, several bees kept harassing me as I worked in the yard.   Even when I wasn't even close to the hives a few chose to be quite annoying.  Fortunately I was able to send them to bee heaven and it's been back to normal since ... kind of.  The one very large hive by the chair where I used to sit and watch the bees seems to have a million guard bees hanging out on the landing entrance area.  They don't seem to like me sitting there any longer and let me know it.   It's like a bunch of gang members hanging out on a street corner and then I come along.  A few of them want to show off in front of the other guard bees and have a good laugh as the lumbering human gets chased off.  It's so humiliating ....

The original 2 raised beds are doing well but the new one is just ok.  That one didn't get enough good compost and soil so it's going to need some extra TLC.  Most of the plants are doing very well and we've been getting plenty of fresh tomatoes which is our favorite.  And it looks like the mustard greens will be ready for picking soon.

Growing corn in Florida should be interesting

Slightly challenged raised bed

Brussel sprouts

The rain barrel system has been tweaked and a level indicator was installed.  It rained right after it was installed so watching the indicator rise showed how quickly the rain barrels fill up.  The plumbing with the new pump was also completed and works very well.  Only thing that still needs to be installed is a backup system which will allow me to hook up a hose to city water in case the rain barrels run dry and the irrigation system needs to run.  The (new) irrigation system will be installed later this week and should automate most of the watering.  Because it takes a lot of time to water all these plants and you can't ignore that task.

Planting seeds, monarch butterfly plants and a new plan for catching bees

I'm kind of skipping over a lot of projects lately so there's a few things missing in the blog.   It's been quite busy.

2nd attempt at a successful swarm trap

First thing is I'm reading a fascinating book called "Honeybee Democracy by Thomas Seeley.  It is based on research by some of the top bee scientists / animal behaviorists that describe how the honey bees make collective decisions and how they communicate.  It completely leaves you in awe.  One chapter talked about all the experiments that were done to determine how bees choose their homes when they swarm.  After reading this chapter I made several modifications to the swarm trap in front of our home and moved it up into a tree as well as changed the direction it was facing and made it more desirable to honey bees.  Now we'll see how this works out.  Only down side is if I catch a swarm I'll have to retrieve it with a ladder which will be a bit tricky.

Today we planted seeds in our miniature greenhouses we made from items bought at the dollar store.  My earlier attempts at planting seeds were not thought out and researched as carefully as I should have.  This time the seedlings will have a better chance.  However it looks like we're running a takeout restaurant with these containers lined up on top of the rain barrels.  The seeds will be more protected and controlled in that humidity and water delivery will be accurate.  Not quite sure if I want to put them in direct sun as it may cook the seeds.  Still working out a few details.

milkweed

milkweed (on the right)

Not long ago I was at a friends home who had raised beds with flowers that attracted monarch butterflies.  There were butterflies everywhere so I inquired what type of plants they were.  They were milkweed and the more I researched milkweed the more intrigued I became with this plant which is not easily obtained.  But thanks to the internet, a dozen plants were located not far from where we live.  Milkweed is also loved by honey bees and supposedly makes top grade honey which will be another benefit.

The raised beds are as healthy as can be and the plants are growing like mad.  I cooked up a 55 gallon barrel of delicious compost tea for the plants and spent the other day going all around the yard feeding plants.  A giant tea bag was made from a paint strainer bag and it was loaded up with compost and some rock dust.  After dipping and hanging in the barrel, an aerator was added to keep the tea oxygenated.  I used an electric pump to fill the barrel with rainwater from the rain barrel setup.  The resulting bacteria in the compost tea needs a couple ounces of molasses a day for food.  In the near future the plan is to hook the compost barrel up to a garden hose with a pump so it can be easily applied anywhere using a garden hose.

Tomorrow it's time to inspect the hives and see what's going on in there.  Should be an interesting (and beautiful) day.

A few more Bee Lessons and Rain Barrels

I've been kind of concerned that I put the upper deep boxes on the hives much too early.  In researching on the internet it was unanimous that I shouldn't have put them on.  So today I went in to inspect the hives and it was quite interesting.  My smoker kept going out and was a pain to keep going.  Since then I found some good youtube videos explaining that's one of the biggest frustrations for new beekeepers and found some good tips how to keep it burning all day if need be(e).

The first hive I went into was not happy about the intrusion into their home.  The first thing I noticed was the upper super of empty frames had quite a few bees on the frames.  They weren't making comb or anything productive from what I could see.  What I deduced was they were eating the wax off those frames.  I recalled reading something about this happening when there's too many empty frames and space.  After deciding to remove the upper box my dilemma was evicting the bees that were happily munching the wax.  It took awhile but I finally succeeded.   Then I inspected the frames from the nucs as well as the new frames on the lower hive.  I saw the queen which was good and everything looked ok.

Back to single deep super

The second hive was pretty much the same.  I wasn't sure about the queen though.  I think I saw a couple drones which at first had me thinking they were the queen.  Removing the upper box had the same challenges but this hive of bees seemed much calmer than the first group.  Also they drew some comb on the new frames which was encouraging.

All week I've been tinkering with the rain barrel system and it's looking and working pretty good.  I also added a 5th barrel to be a compost tea brewer.  It won't be connected to the rain barrel system but will probably be able to interface with the hydration delivery systems which are still in early design phase.  What I would love to do is automate most of the watering.

The rain diverter was one of the biggest frustrations in building this.  Initially I purchased the (expensive) fiskars diverter (a diverter filters debris like leaves and twigs and has an overflow mechanism).

Redneck Diverter

While it worked, it was just marginal.  I bought a very simple diverter at ACE hardware and it works much better.  Only downside is the overflow is a bit messier and overflow will just flow off the initial barrel onto the ground.  No big deal.  The day before I finished we had intense rain but I wasn't able to capture any of it.   If you're thinking about a rain barrel system my advice is to not use metal barrels.  Only metal one I have is for the composter.  The problem with metal is cutting a hole in the barrel for the spicot.  Cutting strong steel is more than a lot of people want to deal with.  Fortunately I have a good array of metal working tools.

Rain barrel gutters and bees on the hives

After a lot of trying to figure out how to route the gutters on the shed to feed the rain barrels, I finally came up with a workable plan.  There's still a million details to work out but the gutters are up and ready to feed the four barrels.  First step though will be to link them all together.

In other news,  the new hives are set up and already receiving visitors.